Machu Pichu & Fukushima

September 4, 2015

Machu Picchu, Fukushima village forming friendship agreement

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201509040036

By NATSUKI EDOGAWA/ Staff Writer

OTAMA, Fukushima Prefecture--After rejecting offers from around the world, a famed Peruvian village home to Inca remains picked a small municipality in Fukushima Prefecture for its first sister-city relationship.

In fact, it was Machu Picchu, a “lost city” in the Andes Mountains, that approached Otama village for the friendship agreement.

Machu Picchu had received many requests for such ties, but it could not find any significant connection or relation to those suitors, Elard Escala, the Peruvian ambassador to Japan, said at a news conference in Otama on Sept. 3.

“We wanted to have a friendship agreement first with the home village of Yokichi Nouchi, the man to whom the (Peruvian) villagers were greatly indebted,” Escala said.

Nouchi, who was from Otama, a village at the foot of Mount Adatara, immigrated to Peru in 1917. As an employee at the national railway, he helped to lay the tracks leading to Machu Picchu, and he moved to the village in the 1920s.

He built the hydraulic power plant and a hotel in the remote village, and served as chief of Machu Picchu for two years. He died in 1969.

With a population of about 3,000, Machu Picchu lies at the foot of a location listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site that is considered one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations.

Nouchi’s legacy prompted Machu Picchu to propose a friendship agreement with Otama, a village of about 8,500, according to officials. But the plan was delayed partly because Otama lacked the funds to send officials to the Peruvian village.

Cesar Yoshiro Nouchi, the 39-year-old grandson of Yokichi Nouchi and a resident of Nagoya, helped to pave the way for the first visit by Otama officials to Machu Picchu in 2012.

The sister-city affiliation ceremony will be held in October in Machu Picchu.